Take a Break
by Anime-Angel-Ash
Summary: Larsa's a bit too devoted to his duties for his own good. Warning for slight bondage. Submission for livejournal's hetchallenge.


Larsa had gotten so used to that tapping by now that he'd practically memorized the sound. It was unchanging, the impossibly light clicking of four fingers patting a speedy rhythm against the glass of his window. Though the irregularity of just how often it occurred often made it a surprise (particularly on such nights as tonight, when he'd forgotten anything outside his paperwork even existed), it was never an unwelcome one. Even tonight, with frustration bearing down upon him and a migraine tickling at the corners of his brain, he couldn't help but smile when he heard that familiar beat.

Quickly scrawling his winding signature on a bill to change the required weight of farm-raised cockatrices, he stood, turned, shook his head, and feigned being put upon as he made for the window. "Isn't it a bit late to be dropping in?" he asked as he unlatched the window and pulled it open to admit his guest. Nimbly, she leapt from where she'd been clinging to the window frame and landed gracefully at his side, the fabric of her clothes and her long, blonde hair settling back into place as if their owner hadn't just climbed several stories to reach his window. Even after all these years, Larsa couldn't help but be impressed, even though he'd learned not to question her abilities. It was just Penelo. She could do these things.

"Pirates don't have a bedtime," Penelo answered by way of a greeting, folding her arms over her stomach and leaning forward, smiling at him. "I would think emperors didn't, either."

"True enough," Larsa replied, nodding his concession of the point. However, before he could do as he always did and make up for his teasing with a proper greeting and an inquiry into the state of her health, her attention was already elsewhere. Namely, upon his desk.

"Forget not having a bedtime," she said, striding lightly over to the writing table and inspecting the documents that covered it. "It's a wonder you get any sleep at all."

She had a point, of course. His desk was entirely covered in documents of varying degrees of import, piles of them balanced hazardously all across the dark wooden desktop and all but begging for a chance to come tumbling down. As per the norm, ridiculous amounts of formal paperwork had come pouring in on him, each piece presenting a fresh problem that he was going to be expected to solve, somehow. He'd been working away at it for the last few days, enduring a seemingly endless amount of tedious bills, painful public tender, and other such things that required his looping signature or public endorsement. Just this morning, he'd had to suffer through the Archadian gentry's proposal to reclaim Dalmasca—which was just a month away from marking its fifth year of freedom from the empire—as to set an example for some of the empire's other territories, which were beginning to vie for their own freedom. That was currently underneath a pile of insipidly penned taxation proposals, and he planned to take at least a day to get over the headache it caused him before he attempted to read it again. That wasn't even including the formal proposals that he had received from the senate just this morning, which still lay unopened. He judged that he'd need a few glasses of wine in him before he could stand to address those. So, putting it simply, Penelo's guess had been correct. Sleep had been a rare blessing, as of late.

"It's part of being emperor, I'm afraid," Larsa replied, sighing as he pulled his chair out and rested a hand on the desk (and, since there wasn't an inch of bare space there, ended up crumpling a death threat letter he'd received last week, and that Gabranth had taken care by the day after its arrival), and turned to the blonde sky-pirate. "And I'm also afraid it's going to keep me from being particularly good company tonight."

"You sure you don't deserve a break?" she asked, leaning over and pushing aside a bit of his bangs that, in his overly stressed state, he had allowed to go wild. "You look really tired."

As tempting as the offer was—both because it promised a well needed bit of rest and because of the implication that he would be spending that time resting with _her_—he still found himself tapping a finger against hers and shaking his head. "The empire waits for no man," he said with a sigh, sitting down and taking up his quill again. "Not even her emperor." Pulling over a bill to raise the tariff on imported steel gorgets, he dipped his quill into the inkwell beside his hand, only to pull back and sigh in resignation when he found that he'd emptied the latter again.

"If you'll excuse me for a moment, Penelo," he said as he stood again, lifted the bottle from his desk, and headed for the door. The servants would probably be downright flabbergasted this time, and, he suspected, a little bit irritated. At the rate he was going, they wouldn't be able to buy ink fast enough to keep up with their liege's hectic—

"I'm sorry, Your Highness," came Penelo's voice from behind him, a teasing note to it as she reached around him, plucked the inkwell from his hand, and set it aside, "but you're not going anywhere."

He never would have expected her to be so fast. She was a lucrative sky-pirate; that much he had known. Yet, he'd assumed that such an occupation had merely given her sticky fingers and the ability to make quick and showy exits from crime scenes. He never would have guessed that such a career would have taught Penelo how to bind a man's hands behind his back with her dancing shawl before he could even consider fighting back.

"Wha—Penel—!" Larsa sputtered in surprise, though that was all he was able to get out before one of those thin, nimble hands slid over his mouth. Oh, sweet gods! Had someone turned Penelo? Had she become so much the sky-pirate that she would ransom the Archadian emperor? Or was this even Penelo at all, rather than someone swathed in a magical guise—?

"Come on, Larsa. Take a break. For me?" she breathed into his ear, suspending his fears and replacing them with a pyretic chill that pricked its way down the back of his neck and arms. However, when that subsided, he couldn't help but feel the slightest twinge of annoyance with her. What did she think she was doing, frightening him like that?

"Penelo," he said, glancing over his shoulder and giving her his sternest look. "This is hardly—."

However, once more, he didn't get the chance to finish his sentence. Again, he was cut off as Penelo—who was physically strong as well as fearfully swift, a fact he knew quite well—suddenly pulled him over to the four-poster against the room's opposite wall, flinging the both of them onto it in a confused, bouncing mass of bound and unbound limbs. "You know, it's not the best idea to work as much as you are." The mattress shifting as she pulled her legs up to join the rest of her body on the bed, she gave him her sweetest smile, dragging a thumb over his cheek, his nose, the corner of his lips. "What if you were so tired that you accidentally signed the wrong proposal?"

"You think too little of me," he countered, though whether he was referring to her previous statement or the suggestive workings of her fingers against his skin, he didn't quite know.

"Even an emperor isn't invincible," she purred back, easily covering either option. He would have expected no less, really. "Come on, Larsa." Reaching behind her, Penelo grabbed the edge of the bed's top-cover, flinging it over the both of them with finesse (and in the steadily withdrawing part of his brain that was still capable of rational thought, he found himself suddenly curious as to how she might have learned a trick like _that_). "Take a break. Please?"

"Might you at least untie me?" he asked in return, ever the diplomat. He'd built is reputation, nay, _rebuilt_ the entire empire on principles such as compromise and negotiation. It couldn't hurt to apply them here, as well. Besides, for all his marvelous self-control and gentlemanly manner, the way the bedspread slid over skin that her clothes just barely managed to conceal was enough to make his tied hands twitch.

Humming in consideration, she propped herself up on an elbow and leaned over, walking her fingers over to the knot at his wrist. Grabbing one of the ends to untie it, she smile down at him and leaned over to his ear, whispering a sultry, "No." It wasn't until she had flipped him onto his back and propped herself over him, his bottom lip caught between her teeth, that he remembered how unwise it was to attempt to bargain with pirates.

"Those hands of yours have been doing too much signing," she breathed against his lips, and he could feel her smile as soon as hear it. "They deserve a rest."

He was about to point out that they hardly needed one—or, if he could assume he and they were of one mind, _wanted_ one—she sat up, bringing what she could of the blanket with her and holding it to her waist, playing at coy. "I suppose," she cooed, reaching behind her back and slowly undoing the lacings of her chemise, "mine can do the work."

He should have been able to hear the signs of impending danger. Full armor was not quiet attire, and was hardly designed for any kind of stealth. Any other time, he would have been able to pick up the sound of it clacking and banging in the corridor outside, growing louder with each passing moment. However, at present he was a bit too engrossed in the exploits of his bedmate, who, without so much as altering the pace of her undressing, had just slyly moved herself over his hips so that the rocking of hers would be that much more appreciated. That in mind, he wasn't entirely to blame for not noticing. Regardless, it might have been nice if he had. He might have had a bit of time to prepare, or at least warn Penelo (whose blouse had just slid the last few inches off of her arms onto the floor) to duck. That might have made it slightly less horrifying when the sound of a doorknob turning met his ears.

"Your Excellenc—," came Gabranth's voice as he rushed through the door, moving with the same sort of urgency he'd use when taking out a hired gun that had managed to get a bit too close to Larsa. However, upon glimpsing the scene that lay before him, he seemingly choked on the remains of his words. After a moment's stunned pause, during which all three of the room's occupant's froze mid-movement (mid-step, mid-sway, and mid-attempted-escape-from-bindings), the Judge Magister swiftly threw a hand in front of his face and turned away, looking several degrees of mortified. Simultaneously, Penelo crossed her arms over her chest and flung herself down at Larsa's side, letting out a little squeal that didn't fit at all the seductive profile she'd dawned hardly a minute before. Larsa, meanwhile, could feel himself turning an impressive shade of red, his face burning hot enough to cook a fresh Zu egg on. "Uh, pardon, my liege," Gabranth muttered, apparently still trying his best to be professional. "I heard a cry and thought there,"—a pause, an awkward cough—"might be some sort of trouble."

"No," Larsa managed, just barely keeping a squeak reminiscent of his early pubescent days out of his voice. Meanwhile, he could feel Penelo curling even further against the mattress at his side, almost as if she wanted to be swallowed by it.

"My apologies, my liege," Gabranth replied, stepping back out the door and quietly shut it behind him, like that would do even a minute semblance of good, now. Then, there was nothing but the deadest of silences.

He'd hear about this tomorrow, Larsa knew. Gabranth might not have said anything right then, but Larsa hadn't any doubt that the Magister would find him in the days to follow and, yet again, inform him of just how devastating it would be for his reputation were he to be caught consorting with a Dalmascan sky-pirate. Friend though she was, his political enemies would have a field day, so it really wasn't worth the risk. He'd heard it all before. Still, given what had just transpired, he found that running over the speech's key talking points (slanderous adversaries, riotous populace, powerless Senate, and overall doom and gloom) was the most preferable subject on which to focus his attention.

Penelo said something then, though her voice was far too muffled by the bed for him to hear her properly. Turning over as best he could, given his hands were still tightly bound by her shawl, Larsa glanced at the blonde and gave her a simple, rather inelegant, "Huh?" in response.

Propping herself up on her elbows, Penelo glanced down at him, embarrassment still staining her cheeks a vivid red. However, it wasn't alone upon her face, as he had expected it to be. Instead, it was accompanied by a vague sense of irritation, which did nothing for his composure. Surely she couldn't be blaming _him_ for this mess!

Then, suddenly, she was leaning over him again and, despite the awkwardness that still swirled about the room like the thickest of fogs, was casting him a most mischievous smile. "I said,"—reaching over, she rested a hand over his mouth, stroking the corner of his lips with her thumb—"am I going to have to gag you, as well?"


End file.
